We wore out the first copy within 3 months, bought a second for the car. Comprehensive -- every road, trace, damp ravine (well, maybe that's going a bit too far) -- and accurate. Printed at a very readable scale. For someone used to NSEW-oriented streets in the SW US, a little time curled up with this map provided an absolutely essential re-orientation to the delightful aimlessness of southern MD roads.

If you live on, near or visit and love Chesapeake Bay you should read this engaging and informative book. A collection of John Page William Jr.'s columns from "Chesapeake Bay Magazine," the book walks you through a year on the Bay and it's surrounding country. Once you've read it, you'll be amazed at how it sharpens your view of what is going on around you on or along the water. This is a book for anyone who enjoys the Bay in any way -- boating, camping, cottaging, or just sitting by the waterside on a quiet afternoon with a line in the water. Highly recommended!

A delightful pistache with Chappell's usual witty touc

This collection of nine essays, edited by Thad W. Tate and David L. Ammerman, examine various aspects of the development of Anglo-American culture in the Chesapeake colonies, Maryland and Virginia. The studies provide a detailed and informative consideration of life in the seventeenth-century Chesapeake.

The scholars writing in this volume have published various works on the colonial Chesapeake. James Horn, who authored the essay on servant emigration to the Chesapeake, has written Adapting to a New World: English Society in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake. Lorena S. Walsh, who herein examines marriage and family life in colonial Maryland, has written From Calabar to Carter's Grove: The History of a Virginia Slave Community. Darrett B. and Anita H. Rutman provide a startling and compelling portrait of family fragmentation and reformation due to early parental death and successive remarriage. The two also cowrote the study, A Place in Time: Middlesex County, Virginia, 1650-1750, a detailed reconstruction of life in a Virginia county, for masters and farmers and servants and slaves.

The emergence of an American-born elite is considered in Virginia by Carole Shammas, author of Inheritance in America, and in Maryland by David W. Jordan, author of Foundations of Representative Government in Maryland, 1632-1715. Carville V. Earle, author of Evolution of a Tidewater Settlement System, presents a study of disease and death rates in early Virginia. Kevin P. Kelly studies the dispersed settlement patterns in Surry County, Virginia. Kelly authored The Economic and Social Development of Seventeenth-Century Surry County, Virginia. Lois Green Carr and Russell R. Menard, who have authrored and edited a number of studies on the Chesapeake, present in this book a study of the economic opportunities of freed indentured servants in Maryland.

The essays presented in this work should interest anyone researching Chesapeake history or Southern genealogy.

Africans and African-Americans were present in Virginia from early in the seventeenth century, but the essays herein concentrate on the early Anglo-American presence. The book by Rutman and Rutman, as well as the work by Walsh, should be consulted for African-American life in the early Chesapeake. See also Wesley Frank Craven, White, Red, and Black: The Seventeenth-Century Virginian. White, Red, and Black is a tremendous but succinct study of the white, Indian and African presence in early colonial Virginia. Gerald Mullin, Flight and Rebellion: Slave Resistance in Eighteenth-Century Virginia, as well as works by Mechal Sobel, illuminate black colonial experience in a later period.

Whether you live in the nation's capital, Chevy Chase self or have an interest in architecture and history, this book is sure to please you. Beautifully written and illustrated, this is ***** reading. Sure to feature prominently on my coffee table for a long time too!

For anyone who has ever vacationed at Ocean City, MD this book adds a whole new dimension to memories of the seaside town. The ultimate beach book--I thorougly enjoyed sitting on the beach and imaganing the town the way it was decades ago.

Our family loves to dine at the shore and this book brings back all those memories. I love the illustrations and have tried 6 or 7 great recipes from it.

Brooke Coleman, who authored the excellent book on Georgia in The Library of the Thirteen Colonies and The Lost Colony series, turns in another job with this look at "The Colony of Maryland." I was trying to remember having ever learned anything about Maryland from Colonial times and could recall nothing, so I found this little volume fascinating. Coleman talks about how Sir George Calvert wanted to establish a place where Catholics would be free to live and received a charter from King Charles I of England to found a colony north of Virginia. We learn how rich landowners became lord of a manor and used indentured servants to work the land, how sickness claims many lives in Maryland's early years, and how eventually yeoman farmers settled small farms while the lords owned huge planatations. I was especially interested to learn how religious tensions between Catholics and Protestants came to a head during the time of the Engliish Civil War, which was known as "the plundering time," and which ignored the Act of Toleration that had been passed in Maryland. I know history textbooks always talk about Jamestown in Virginia and Plymouth in Massachsetts when it comes to explaining colonial times to young students. But I have really enjoyed learning about these other colonies, of which Maryland has one of the most fascinating histories. This series would be of great use to young students in learning about the differences between the original colonies, which becomes important when it comes time to understand why they had difficulty uniting against the English.

The authors do a great job of recording and illustrating Maryland through it's historic markers.

I suspect all states have markers. Most do not know where they all are or present them in any coherent form. This book remedies that situation for the state of Maryland. The book will serve as a snapshot of Maryland's rich history through a geogrpahically based capsule of what happened in each county. It also serves as a wonderful tour guide for any inclined to undertake history and event based touring.

The book is richly illustrated with first class photographs. (One of the annual lighting of Anteitam Battlefield is brilliant -- I called to get information for a visit). The synopses of each marker and event give a good sketch of what happened where.

By the way, the same authors have been commissioned to do a photographic history of Delaware throught its historic markers (due out in the Fall of 2001). Anyone interested in a small state that packs a lot of history will enjoy that work.

Conquering the Appalachians is an important piece of American railroad history. This book documents railway construction in the Appalachian Mountains in the early years of the twentieth century. The construction of tunnels and trestles is described in detail and enhanced by crystal clear black and white photos from the collection of William Cary Hattan, the civil engineer who actually built large portions of the Clinchfield and Western Maryland Railways. Well written and researched by Hattan's daughter, Mary Hattan Bogart, this book would be an important addition to any library of railroad books. It belongs in the reference departments of every public library within the states of Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. Future generations need access to what Hattan and his men accomplished in those states with dynamite, carts, mules, pick axes, shovels and sheer muscle. Many of their trestles and tunnels still exist, unused for their original purpose, but monuments to determination and grit. I've seen two of the trestles, one in Pennington Gap, Virginia and another nearby. They are awe inspiring for anyone who has read this book.